01 — Position
From the format you have to the format the regulation names.
Software that helps you navigate publishing, document retention and document conversion — from a type you don’t want, to the type you do want, per government regulations. It runs on your own hardware, holds no account, contacts no server of ours, and checks no licence over a network.
02 — Measured
The claim is a measurement, not a feature list
Competing products say “Word compatible” and mean approximately. These figures were measured on the dates given, against Microsoft Word’s own PDF rendering, LibreOffice’s, or an independent validator, and are reproducible against your own documents on request. Nothing in this table is a claim from memory.
| Measurement | Result | Method | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word-parity export, 56 reference documents | 2,781 of 2,848 pages identical; 0 unexplained | Every page compared with Word’s own rendering line by line, by position, to half a point. The 67 differing pages each carry a recorded, measured cause. Includes a 318-page 6 × 9 book, a 150-page 4.25 × 7 book at 150 / 150 and a 235-page classroom workbook at 235 / 235 | 2026-09-12 |
| Classroom workbook, 235 pages | 235 / 235 pages identical | A compatibility-mode-14 workbook with 32 boxes for students to write in, tables nested inside table cells and mirrored margins; twenty engine rules found in it and measured in Word the same day, each with its own probe file, none specific to the book | 2026-09-12 |
| Footnotes and endnotes | 114 / 114, 7 / 7, 3 / 3 pages | A footnote swept across the page foot in 1 pt steps, a seven-page reference and three endnote cases, against Word; Word’s own render of SkyeWriter’s resave of the reference, 7 / 7 | 2026-09-11 |
| Tracked changes and comments | 1 / 1, 1 / 1 pages | Word’s own tracked file and comment file, rendered final by SkyeWriter against Word’s final render; the resave keeps every change, note, reply and resolved state, and Word reads them back | 2026-09-12 |
| Table of contents | 26 / 26 numbers equal | Contents regenerated from SkyeWriter’s own pagination, never from Word’s cached values | 2026-09-02 |
| Round trip, 150-leaf book | 0 differing leaves | The .docx SkyeWriter saved, rendered by Word, diffed against Word’s rendering of the original | 2026-09-02 |
| Round trip, frames reference | 12 / 12 pages identical | Text boxes, a floating picture, a framed paragraph, unequal text columns and Word’s default kerning, resaved by SkyeWriter and rendered by Word | 2026-09-07 |
| Windows ↔ Linux | 0.000 pt | Every line at the same position on both builds; the fonts ship with the product | 2026-09-06 |
| Floating frames and columns | 11 / 12, 7 / 7, 7 / 7 pages | Three Word-made references; the one page apart is a line Word fits to 1.2 pt from the margin | 2026-09-07 |
| Printed book | 4 of 4 proofs correct | A 150-leaf 4.25 × 7 book with a SkyeWriter interior, through Amazon KDP: every page, the front matter and the format, checked on paper on all four copies | 2026-09-07 |
| Print-ready interior | 318 pages, clean preflight | An unformatted 8.5 × 11 manuscript set up for KDP 6 × 9 in one command: trim, margins from the page count, bleed, preflight | 2026-09-05 |
| PDF/UA-1 | pass, 5 of 5 | veraPDF 1.30.2, PDF/UA-1 profile, on five tagged exports including both books | 2026-09-06 |
| EPUB 3 | 0 fatals / 0 errors / 0 warnings | W3C EPUBCheck 5.3.0 on four books and the frames reference, covers embedded, links live | 2026-09-02/07 |
| ODT opened in LibreOffice 26.2 | 291 / 318 pages identical (91 %) | LibreOffice’s render of a SkyeWriter .odt against Word’s PDF; also 142 / 150, 5 / 5, 4 / 4, 2 / 3. Not a promise of page identity in LibreOffice: what remains is Writer’s own engine | 2026-09-06 |
| ODT written by Writer, read by SkyeWriter | 6 / 6, 1 / 1, 1 / 1 pages | A document Writer authored and two of its templates, against Writer’s own PDF; the letter template identical but for its live date field | 2026-09-06/07 |
| Markdown round trip | 367 / 367 and 1,840 / 1,840 lines | Two books out to Markdown and back, line for line | 2026-09-06 |
| Internal self-test | 483 / 483 | Editing, pagination, tables, frames, fields, footnotes, tracked changes and comments, hyphenation, tab stops, every export, the licence, the trial and the file lock | 2026-09-12 |
Amazon’s previewer accepted a SkyeWriter interior on 2026-09-03, and the four printed proofs of that book arrived on 2026-09-07 complete: all pages, front matter and format correct, all four alike. Word remains the reference SkyeWriter is measured against; Calibre remains the reference for the ebook until a SkyeWriter EPUB has been through Kindle’s own previewer.
03 — Formats
SkyeWriter format matrix
One manuscript source, exported to each channel’s or each mandate’s requirement without an intermediate service. Status is stated as at 2026-09-12 and is not a roadmap promise.
| Format | Read | Write | Why it is here |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOCX | yes | yes | The format everyone sends you; measured parity both ways |
| DOC | yes | with Word installed | Archives that outlived the software that made them |
| ODT / ODF | yes | yes, measured | One of the two formats named by Germany’s Deutschland-Stack (18 March 2026); LibreOffice’s own files read back, Writer opens ours |
| PDF/UA-1 | — | yes, validated | The second named format: tagged structure, alt text, language, links, artifacts, PDF/UA identification; passes veraPDF |
| text | print-ready | Retention, and the printer’s actual requirement (PDF 1.4 for KDP and IngramSpark, 1.7 and 2.0 presets) | |
| EPUB 3 | — | yes | Reflowable retail and library distribution; validates clean under EPUBCheck 5.3.0, cover embedded |
| XPS | — | yes | Fixed-layout archival on Windows estates |
| RTF | yes | yes | The oldest interchange format still in daily use; tables, pictures, footnotes, headers and footers both ways |
| HTML | yes | yes | One self-contained page with its pictures inside it, for mail or a content system; a browser’s save or another program’s export reads back |
| Markdown | yes | yes | Opens as a readable page, leaves as clean syntax; pictures beside the file |
| Plain text | yes | yes | The lowest common denominator, kept |
Every export also runs from the command line on a server with no display, one file or a whole folder, on Windows or Linux.
04 — Where it runs
Windows and Linux today; a phone edition; macOS and iOS to follow
Desktop
Windows and Linux, as self-contained installations that need nothing else on the machine. The Linux build passes its own self-test on a NixOS machine and paginates the corpus to 0.000 points of the Windows build. macOS: the code runs there today, the packaging does not exist yet.
Phone and tablet
Android runs on a phone: it opens a manuscript from the system picker or straight from an attachment, edits and saves it, keeps an autosave every two minutes and the moment the phone puts it away, offers unsaved work back on its home screen, and prints through Android’s own print sheet. It is the lighter edition on purpose, for reading, writing and printing; the publishing pipeline stays on the desktop. iOS is written and compiles only on a Mac; its build waits on the Apple developer enrolment.
Fonts
SkyeWriter ships its own fonts. A family a machine lacks is substituted identically in layout and in every export, so the page does not move when the file changes hands.
Not yet
Printing on paper has not been tested; File ▸ Print was proven to a PDF printer on 2026-09-12 and produces the same final page as the export, whatever changes are still pending. The Windows installer exists and is unsigned, so Windows warns on first run until a code-signing certificate is in hand; it is not yet published here.
05 — Licence & trial
What a licence is here
A signed file. It is verified on your machine, offline, for the life of the machine. No activation call, no seat check, no expiry. One person may install SkyeWriter on three computers, Windows, Linux or macOS in any mix, and on their own phones and tablets at no extra charge.
- Term
- Perpetual. Never a subscription.
- Updates
- A year of updates included; a later major version is a new purchase you may decline
- Computers
- Three per person, any mix of Windows, Linux and macOS
- Phones
- Included with a desktop licence; $24.99 on their own
- If the company stops
- Your software keeps working. It never needed us.
The trial
Thirty days of actual use, fully featured, no cap on output, no card, no account. SkyeWriter counts the days on which it ran, not the calendar.
When the thirty days are used, the writing stays free: SkyeWriter keeps opening, editing and saving your documents as .docx, Markdown and plain text. Printing and every publication output, that is PDF, tagged PDF, XPS, EPUB, ODT and the KDP and IngramSpark setup, ask for a licence, and say so plainly with the About box one click away.
Built and measured 2026-09-07: a settings folder with thirty-one days of use refuses a PDF export and still saves a .docx; a fresh one allows the export and records the day.
06 — Prices
Prices
- Single seat
- $99, one-time. $49 during the first fourteen days after launch, single seat only
- 3 seats
- 15 % off: $252
- 5 seats
- $400
- Above 5
- By quotation, on a ladder that reaches 40 % off at five thousand seats
- Phone app
- $24.99, Apple or Android; free with a desktop licence
- Euro
- Shown at checkout, VAT included, before you pay
- Refund
- Fourteen days from purchase, your money back, no reason required, on purchases made at our own checkout
- Replacement key
- 25 % of the licence price, waived on proven cause
07 — Support
Stated plainly, before you buy
The last two lines are published deliberately. Skye Hawke Software is one person; a contracted voice-support claim would be false, and one loose claim would rightly cost us the measured ones. Organisations needing a committed response, replacement of every seat within two business days and conformance updates should read the Assurance terms on the institutions page.
08 — Downloads
In preparation
The first public release is being packaged: a signed Windows installer, a Linux archive, and the Android edition through its store. There is no mailing list, because there is no account; write to hello@skyehawkesoftware.com and you will be told, once, when the first signed build ships.
Release signatures and checksums will be published on this page with the first build.
09 — Register
Version register
| Version | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 0.1.62 | 2026-09-12, in test | Thirty-four builds from a day and a half of testing on a real screen. A document lock shared with Word and LibreOffice: a file open elsewhere is announced by each of the three, a second SkyeWriter opens a copy named “name (2)”, and a save refused by a held file says who holds it. Unsaved work announced in a dialog at start and on a bar above the page. Comments with Word’s Resolve, threaded replies kept through a round trip, and undo for all of it; Accept and Reject on the toolbar, in the right-click menu and in a Changes and comments pane. Toolbar groups named, captioned and readable by a screen reader, with a File group; dictation through the operating system; a highlighter with an off. A licence that can be pasted as text or deployed once for a whole machine. Tables nested inside table cells laid to Word’s geometry, a section opener’s spacing, centred tables, writing lines inside boxes, the class-edition rules in the table above. East Asian text laid to Word’s line rule with the named face honoured. |
| 0.1.28 | 2026-09-11 | Word-parity layout engine; DOCX, DOC, ODT, RTF, HTML, Markdown and text in; PDF, PDF/UA, EPUB 3, XPS, ODT, RTF, HTML, Markdown out; KDP and IngramSpark setup; tables, lists, numbering to nine levels, contents fields, hyperlinks, floating frames, text columns, footnotes and endnotes, tracked changes and comments, hyphenation in 31 languages, tab stops, shading and borders; the trial and the licence; Windows installer, Linux tarball and Android |
This page is updated when a measurement changes. Page updated 2026-09-13.